A winding Celtic path or 230 stairs bring you from the quaint village of Montestrutto and its famous rock-climbing park to the castle's carefully manicured and enclosed garden. There, in the secluded niches amid palm and fruit trees, you may want to enjoy your favorite beverage, a snack, meal, or quiet conversation before heading inside to the castle's perennially cool two-story entrance hall richly decorated in the 1920s with frescoes of the castle's history. If you arrive hungry you can enter the dining room and fully equipped kitchen to the right of the entrance hall. If you'd prefer to view the gardens from inside, you can turn left in the entrance hall and go to the richly paneled and elaborately frescoed conservatory and study in which the famous musician and composer Rosario Scalero taught Leonard Bernstein, Samuel Barber, Nino Rota, Gian Carlo Menotti, and many other renowned composers and musicians of the following generation. Should you like to lie down, you can head up the stairs opposite the entrance, past one or more window niches, to the bedrooms on the second and third floors, where you'll also find the grand living room with its marble fireplace, elaborate medievalist shutters and windows, exquisite built-in cabinetry, and extensive decorative frescoes. To the left of that room is the Master bedroom, with more, elaborate woodwork, and a wooden porch overlooking the back of the castle. And to the right of the living room is the library, with yet more beautiful woodwork and frescoes as well as access to a winding staircase that leads up to the tower bedroom, which naturally offers the most stunning views of all, not to mention a few echoes from a fairy tale or two.

I'm an art history scholar with a specialty in medieval culture and in post-medieval responses to the Middle Ages, so this castle and the hundreds around it, not to mention the thousands of medieval to Baroque churches in the area, really scratch one of my itches. As does the landscape. Much as I love art and architecture, I also adore nature, so I get endless enjoyment from the Alpine scenery, medieval pilgrimage and hiking trails, cross-country and downhill skiing in the nearby mountains, rock-climbing by the base of the castle hill, and quiet moments in the castle's carefully manicured garden

Ninth-century castle beautifully restored and recently augmented with central heating and modern amenities. Located on a high hill in the Valle d'Aosta an hour from Milan and Turin, it features stunning views of mountains, waterfalls, a medieval church, and carefully manicured gardens. With easy access to Gran Paradiso National Park, world-class skiing, fine dining, hiking trails, dozens of other castles, and hundreds of medieval churches, it combines the very best of the past and present.